 | |  |
Notes
Critical Examination of the Text of Shakespeare (London, 1860), I, 104, cited by Furness, A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, Twelfe Night, or, What You Will (Philadelphia, 1901), p. 122.
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and J. D. Wilson, eds., Twelfth Night or What You Will (Cambridge: University Press, 1930), p. 129.
C. J. Sharp and C. L. Marson, Folk Songs from Somerset (London, 1911), pp. 52-55. There is another printing of this song in The Fireside Book of Folk Songs, selected and edited by M. B. Boni (New York, [1947]), pp. 248-51.
The shorter, and more familiar, version is printed by J. O. Halliwell in his Nursery Rhymes of England, Collected Principally from Oral Tradition (The Percy Society, [1842]), pp. 127-28. He adds a note that "each child in succession repeats the gifts of the day, and forfeits for each mistake. This accumulative process is a favourite with children; in early writers, such as Homer, the repetition of messages, etc. please on the same principle."
This Christmas-Epiphany carol is perhaps the most attractive of the whole genre of accumulative songs which include "This is the house that Jack built," "The barley mow," "One man shall mow my meadow," and "The Dilly Song" (vide Sharp and Marson, loc. cit.). But it is not unique in being an enumerative ballad connected with a religious festival: "The Seven Joys of Mary" ("Joys Seven") and "In those twelve days let us be glad" ("A New Dial") are similar: these last two are numbers 70 and 64 in The Oxford Book of Carols, edited by Dearmer, Williams, and Shaw (Oxford: University Press, [1938]).
| | |